


not to put too fine a point on it

by thisstableground



Series: less than ninety degrees [7]
Category: Do No Harm (TV)
Genre: Birds, Humor, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:47:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24456181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisstableground/pseuds/thisstableground
Summary: There's a bird in Usnavi's apartment.
Relationships: Ruben Marcado/Usnavi (In the Heights)/Vanessa (In the Heights)
Series: less than ninety degrees [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/713601
Comments: 7
Kudos: 27





	not to put too fine a point on it

**Author's Note:**

> prompt fill from tumblr! set in very early relationship times.

“Looked like Vanessa was dolling herself up real cute for your lunch date when I went up on break,” Usnavi says. “And me stuck here at the store while you guys have all the fun without me.”

“You don’t mind, do you?” Ruben asks, concerned. “I don’t wanna, y’know, get in the way of things.”

“She’s your girlfriend too,” Usnavi says, charitably ignoring the panicked balloon-deflating noise Ruben makes: the g-word is still a very new development. “I just miss you both when I can’t come with you.”

“We’ll be done in a couple hours.”

“I _know_ , it’s _so_ long.” Usnavi says, tragically. He picks up his cell from where it’s vibrating insistently on the counter. “Oh! She misses us too! Hey, Vanessa!” 

His smile disappears as she responds: from where he’s standing, all Ruben can hear is a bunch of incoherent yelling and shrieking from the other end. His heartrate instantly triples. It might have shattered a rib or two.

Usnavi grabs the creased piece of laminated paper under the counter that reads “back in five minutes/vuelta en cinco minutos!!” and is saying "¿qué pa—Vanessa, cálmate, I don’t – what’s _happening_?” as he runs to stick it to the door and click the locks closed. Even from several feet away, Ruben hears Vanessa’s voice yell “JUST GET YOUR SKINNY ASS UP HERE RIGHT NOW!”

He hightails it after Usnavi up the back stairs to the apartment. “What was _that?!”_

“No sé, I couldn’t tell, it sounded like she said someone came into the apartment-”

 _“What_?!” He doesn’t even have time to panic about it: they crest the top of the stairs and almost crash directly into Vanessa standing outside Usnavi’s front door. She’s dripping wet and wearing only a towel, trying to look in through the peephole despite that decidedly not being how peepholes work.

“Vanessa!” Ruben goes instinctively to check on her then hastily averts his eyes to the ceiling when he registers what she’s wearing, because yes, he saw her naked last night but he’s still _polite._ “Oh, uh—“

Usnavi shrugs out of his shirt to drape around Vanessa’s shoulders and hugs her close. “Amorcita, what happened, are you okay?”

“No, I am not okay!” she says furiously. “I was in the shower and a fucking _bird_ came in and chased me out here!”

“Wait, a _bird_? You were just screaming because of a bird?” Ruben catches Usnavi’s eye and both of them instantly burst into laughter, which is mostly from relief and is also exactly the wrong thing to do.

“Oh, so it’s funny is it?” Vanessa says, looking about as murderous as anyone with shampoo bubbles in their hair has ever looked.

“We’re not laughing at you, I promise!” Ruben says, undercut significantly by the fact that to be fair, he is still laughing. “We’re just relieved it wasn’t anything dangerous.”

“Not dangerous?!” Vanessa hollers. “It could have _beaked_ me!”

“Heyheyhey, we’re cool, we’re cool,” Usnavi says soothingly, making _cut it out_ eyes at Ruben. “Ain’t gonna let nothing run my girl out of my apartment like that. I’ll get the bird, you just wait here with Ruben. Who will not laugh any more,” he adds, severely.

“Laughing? Never even heard of it,” Ruben says.

“….You’ll be careful?” Vanessa says to Usnavi.

Usnavi stands just a little taller at her concern, glowing with chivalrous intent, and says, “no te preocupes, querida, I ain’t afraid of no bird.”

He opens the front door and pauses on the threshold. Ruben can tell there’s triumphant battle music playing in his mind right now, mostly because he’s humming it very quietly to himself while he adjusts his hat before he heads inside.

Three and a bit seconds later, there’s a brief crash and some hollered cursing from the apartment. Usnavi bursts back out into the corridor and scuttles over to the opposite wall, flattening against it like a shadow.

“Guys, I am _so_ afraid of this bird,” he tells them.

“Did it beak you,” Ruben says dryly.

“It nearly did! I tried to ask it to leave and then it–“ Usnavi does a wild flapping motion with his arms and goes _skraaaaaa!,_ hiseyes all big in a way that implies _see? Do you see how terrifying this is?_ Ruben tactfully does not inform him that it makes him look like he should be standing outside a car dealership in a heavy wind.

“It was never gonna work, babe, I already tried _everything_ ,” Vanessa says. “I tried yelling at it.”

They wait for the rest of it. There is no rest of it. Vanessa shrugs like _I mean, what else is there?_

“Well, I hope you’re not too attached to this apartment, Usnavi,” Ruben says, and both turn in unison to look at him imploringly. They’re wearing hopeful, expectant _Ruben Can Solve Anything_ expressions, the ones they make before they ask him things about sports or Europe or other arcane and unknowable topics. It makes him want to shout _hold on, I’m just a chemist, the only thing I can do to a pigeon is poison it or teach it how to run assays_ but it also makes him want to go and get a PhD in Please Get Bird Out Of Bathroom so that he can resolve the situation as comprehensively as possible. 

He is, he reflects a little sadly, a sucker for providing solutions.

“Alright,” he says, in a firm voice, because it’s either that or let them down. “Usnavi, I need you to go get me a box from the bodega to trap it in.”

Usnavi nods once, solemn-faced like a soldier being given orders, and hurries downstairs. He’s back in short order with an empty Doritos box that he hands over. Ruben makes it all of two cautiously tiptoeing steps into the apartment before Vanessa grabs his arm and pulls him back for a kiss on the cheek that has the resigned air of impending doom to it: _we only had the Ruben for two weeks before he was taken by the birds,_ he imagines her telling people after the fact. _I knew we should have had him insured._

Inside the bathroom is much less carnage than he’d expected based on the other two’s reactions. There’s water all over the floor, probably from Vanessa’s hasty exit, and Usnavi’s toothbrush cup has been knocked down into the basin, where it’s clattering around under the feet of a pigeon that Ruben would, scientifically, describe as Oh Boy, That’s Pretty Big Actually. In itself it isn’t all that scary, but in the context of being a pigeon in a places that pigeons usually aren’t it really is quite unsettling. Like how he isn’t in the slightest scared of rats, but still jumps out of his skin and tries to keep a wide berth whenever he sees one in the stairwell of his apartment building. At least it isn’t actively flapping around at the moment.

Ruben casts his eye around but there isn’t a towel in the usual place on the radiator – of course not, Vanessa must have grabbed it on her way out. He sets down the box as he takes his sweater off instead, thanks it silently for its dedication to the cause, and then holds it up in the air, inching closer to the pigeon.

“You could just leave now,” he tries, just in case. “It’ll be easier for both of us.”

The pigeon shuffles around, its talons making scritchy noises against the ceramic of the basin. “Trrr,” it says.

“The window’s right there.” He takes another step closer. “Fine, I guess not. Sorry about this,” and in a quick movement he throws his sweater over it and, using the second of struggling confusion while it tries to get free, scoops the sweater-wrapped pigeon into the box in a move that is significantly more blind luck than animal handling skills.

“Sorry sorry sorry sorry!” he chants, shoving half his body and the box out the window and inelegantly shaking a very confused and unhappy pigeon out into the sky, where it luckily flaps off in distress rather than going right for his eyes so he can bring the box back in and close the window blessedly un-mauled. His sweater is mostly unharmed too, albeit in need of a wash, because pigeons have pretty much one reaction to stress, as evidenced by the rest of the bathroom. He tosses the knocked-over toothbrush straight in the trash because he knows Usnavi won’t even think about putting it in his mouth all covered in bird-germs later, and is bleaching down the basin when he hears a tentative “Ruben are you dead?”

“Somehow I pulled through,” he says.

Usnavi opens the door the tiniest fraction. “Is it still in there?”

“No, I caught it and let it out. No casualties, except your toothbrush.”

Usnavi opens the door properly, with Vanessa peeking over his shoulder, not even pretending she isn’t hiding behind him. When they confirm that the bathroom is safe she stands up straight and both of them beam at Ruben.

“You really did it,” Vanessa says, in a tone of absolute awe while Usnavi kisses him enthusiastically and Ruben, a man who has faced down pain, torture and death, has literally never felt braver or more heroic than he does right now.

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment if you liked it!


End file.
